21st Infected
by BellatrixLestrangey
Summary: Magix is hit with an epidemic that has the ability to alter physical appearances among other mysterious things. No cure is known to doctors and Icy is one of the first to contract it. She is forced into hiding as the doctors & scientists are more inclined to quarantine experiment on the first of the infected than to help them.


Her reflection was obscured by the filth on the mirror. It was dusty and old and cracking. All of Icy wanted to believe that what she saw was simply the product of the mirror being so dirty.

But running her hand over the dust and grim only served to dirty her pale skin. It did nothing to change her reflection.

Nothing to change that she was staring at someone who wasn't quite her. Someone with rather short, slightly tangled hair.

Someone whose eyes were a hue or two darker and void of that evil sparkle they once held. They were bigger, and one could say, had a more welcoming and soft glow to them.

Someone whose ears were slightly more pointed...whose face was slightly more rounded...

She didn't look bad by any means. She just wasn't her...

Icy let her nails drag down the mirror's surface-leaving vertical scratches down her reflection's face. The motion had sent a tingle down her spine.

The doctors said it was an epidemic. And that she wasn't the first to get it...

But she was _one_ of the first. Only a handful-a couple hundred-were diagnosed after her and even fewer-20 to be precise-before. According to the doctors that wasn't very many considering Magix's large population. But it was spreading quick.

They said that it effected those who wielded powers of ice and snow the more than any other race of people. About fifty-two percent of the infected, where those who shared Icy's power type.

They said that the disease had no cure...not one that they knew of.

They said they didn't know exactly what it was capable of doing to the body aside from altering its physical appearance.

Icy had been practically screaming at them-demanding to know why they haven't found a cure yet, or how they could _not_ know how to cure it.

She took another look in the mirror, gave an an angry cry, and impulsively punched it-not at all pleased by what she saw.

Icy was fine with her looks as they were prior.

Blood spurted out from the breaks the glass left in her skin.

Her unusually pale skin.

Skin too pale for even an ice type.

She sunk to her knees-slumped against the wall-cradling the stinging, bleeding wound.

Surely her hands would be scarred...

What did it matter, they were barely her hands anymore.

Trivial thing it was.

But Icy noticed it right away; her fingerprints had been classified as loop. But now the many tiny ridges were of the whorl pattern.

At least if she murdered someone they couldn't match it to the fingerprint set they had stored in the system since her last arrest.

Icy couldn't help but smirk to herself at that one. At least this sickness could help her get away with murder. They'd see her new fingerprint, compare it to her old one, and clear her...

Her optimism quickly faded at the thought of what else could happen to her; if the disease could so drastically alter something as complicated and intricate as a fingerprint, what other damage could it inflect?

Could it change her powers?

Her skill set?

Her body type?

Her personality?

Icy shuddered, she liked her personality as it was and wanted to keep it that way.

The ice witch could only pray that they'd find a cure before such drastic changes could take place..._if _such changes were possible.

But how could they, when they didn't even have a name for it yet...

When they didn't even know if it was born from man or nature spawned...

When they didn't know if it spread through the air or if it was contagious. And if it was contagious, if a simple touch was all it took or if it was transmitted sexually or through tainted needles.

That's why Icy couldn't get any real help.

She had to run.

It was get the hell out of there or-despite not even causing any trouble-get locked away and experimented on.

Quarantined.

Just like the rest of the infected.


End file.
